Texas Man Proposes After Volunteers Miraculously Find Engagement Ring In Tornado Debris

The EF4 tornado that ripped through Lamar County in Texas earlier this month destroyed the home Dakota Hudson shared with his longtime love Lauren Patterson. Though happy to have emerged with their lives, Hudson feared the engagement ring he’d hidden inside the house was gone forever. 

"Needle in a haystack doesn't come close to what we were looking for," he told KXAS.

On Tuesday, players from the Paris Junior College softball team arrived to help with the cleanup effort. As they began sifting through the debris, Hudson mentioned the missing ring he was planning to surprise Patterson with. 

"I guess when you tell 20 girls that you’re looking for an engagement ring they’re going to make sure you’re engaged by the end of the day," Hudson told Fox 4 News. "They did not let up. They all came out there and they were all work horses. The amount of work they were able to put in to help us out was phenomenal."

After a few hours of searching, it was player Kate Rainey who found the ring buried two inches underground.

"I was just kind of digging through the mud in this certain particular spot, and I kept digging there," Rainey told KXII. "I don't know why — I felt led to dig right there, and I found a little piece of a metal circle, and it was not metal. It was gold."

"I didn't believe it,” she added. “When I found it, I was like, 'there's no way I just found it.'"

Hudson wasted no time, and got down on one knee right there in front of the softball team.

"Making it through a tornado, what else am I going to wait for?" he joked to Fox 4 News.

"This is a little light at the end of the tunnel for us,” Hudson continued. “We still lost everything, just like everyone else did, but we’re so fortunate with how the community has banded together to try and help support everyone.”